


Genderswap

by purplekitte



Category: Horus Heresy - Various Authors, Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Female Space Marines, Gender Issues, Gender Roles, Multi, Pegging
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-11
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-17 17:30:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 14,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9335228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplekitte/pseuds/purplekitte
Summary: A collection of genderswap ficlets and WIPs





	1. Primarchs Genderswap Speculation

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a genderswap AU, but two different, mutually exclusive genderswap AUs:
> 
> A: Everyone is genderswapped, without exception, in the whole series
> 
> B1: The primarchs are genderswapped + some Astartes, but most people around them are not and societal-level patriarchy and misogyny surrounds them  
> B2: Similar to B1 except that some but not all of the primarchs are genderswapped

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meta, B1

A few of them I think would change a lot. Some of them I think would hardly change at all. Some of them would change very little but how people saw them would. This isn’t a well-thought AU or anything, just bits of speculation I’ve thrown together for one or two unrelated fics. This isn’t really about changing events so much as “How would people react differently to the primarchs if they were gender-swapped, most other things held the same?” Expect lots of tangents about gender stereotypes, particularly in media, and I’m trying to say as much through word choice as anything else. It’s also vague even to me when I’m talking about the perceptions of hypothetical people in-universe, alt!Black Library authors, or alt!fandom from a universe where this was the canon.

**Lion el’Jonson - > Lion el’Jonson / Lyra la’Jonson**

After finding a child alone in the forest killing monsters with her bare hands, Luther decided to raise her as a boy, which he would subsequently spend the rest of his life regretting.

No one on Caliban in those days knew the Lion was a woman, but Luther never forgot. At first it wasn’t an issue and he was really excited by how good at everything she was and they had all their plans together. Later, once things started to quiet down though, he started to blame himself for her problems with people and her complete lack of femininity and thinking about how it was so wrong to force a delicate maiden to shoulder the burdens of a war-leader. (fyi, I think of Lion as being a lot like Saber from Fate in general, and this version even more so. Also vaguely Alanna-esque.)

Lion’s sex gets outed after the Emperor finds her, but this is basically ignored by everyone at this point in practice. Except Luther, who starts calling her Lyra openly, the girl’s name he originally gave her, and trying to get her to act more feminine. He’s also unable to deal with his burning lust for her and on some level wants her to stop fighting and change her personality and become his wife. This causes a lot of friction between them because she doesn’t appreciate his condescending sexism when she could kick his ass and momentarily wants to. (Who is or isn’t gender-swapped in this AU? The Emperor? The Astartes Legions? I have no idea. Maybe?)

Lyra has something of a complicated relationship with gender. Some of her sisters became considered honorary men by their equally sexist societies, but she’s the only one who grew up actively crossdressing. As a knight, she had very little contact with women and doesn’t know how to deal with them and most of what she knows about them are negative stereotypes. She sometimes thinks she wants to be more feminine, but she doesn’t know how to other than being weak. She’s undecided about whether or not she should introduce herself with the female version of her name in the wider galaxy because it’s not like her gender is a secret anymore, but she’s insecure enough about how to be Lion, let alone Lyra. Both get used, so Lion’s generally considered some sort of honorary title by outsiders who don’t know Calibanite naming conventions.

Luther’s very important to her as her strong right arm and brother and best friend, but romance messes everything up as far as she’s concerned. Maybe she has a bit of a crush on him too, but only when he treats her like an equal/man. She will always be a knight first, a king second, and a woman third.

As primarch of the First Legion, she tries to wear dresses when she’s not in armour, but they’re long, loose, practical dresses that show no skin outside her face and hands. She prefers black or dark blues or greens. Her hair is fairly long, but she usually wears it in a braid pinned up in a bun.

**Fulgrim - > Fulgrimna**

Of all the characters, I think Fulgrimna would get treated the most differently while being exactly the same. The best way I can sum this up is a conversation I once had in high school with one of my friends about characters I was putting in a story based on people of our mutual acquaintance. She said to me, “No, you can’t gender-swap Philip. If he were a girl, she’d be a total bitch.” Which is to say, traits we found perfectly endearing in our extremely camp gay friend would be a different matter entirely in a girl.

So, on one hand Fulgrimna would get the vicarious hatred of anyone who was ever looked down on by the popular girls at school rather than sympathy and give everyone else someone to call a stupid whore all the time, as the Lover Clad in the Raiment of Tears of the setting. There’d be more emphasis on her inability to deal with stress and complete panicking whenever things start to go wrong. She’d still have all the perfectionism and insecurities as in canon at least as bad, whenever she got POV.

On the other hand, at least people would be less critical of her cultivating non-combat skills like art. She’d also get a lot more acknowledgement as a competent and efficient administrator, which is actually what she started out doing on her homeplanet. No one would take her remotely seriously as a warrior, so they’d be even more shocked to discover she’s basically the best duellist and could beat almost any other primarch in single combat.

**Perturabo - > Petra**

On one hand, people would be even more sympathetic if she told them about her non-warfare related hopes and dreams. Petra wants people to have nice things. On the other hand, she still doesn’t tell them, because she believes a lot of things about how good daughters never complain or want anything for themselves. She’s very much the young bride who gets bullied by her mother-in-law a lot, then totally snaps.

Not know about her internal turmoil, most people would consider her a total bitch and her short temper and tendency to lash out at people would be seen even more negatively. She reacts badly to the constant disapproval and scorn and gets more and more bitter and disillusioned.

She has really pretty clothes, but doesn’t like to wear them around people. Armour damn it, iron within, iron without. She’s not beautiful and why should she try to be? But secretly she does her own fashion design and has all these really pretty himations and chitons with interesting patterns and designs. She keeps her hair in a bun or sometimes cornrows, but has all these beautiful hair accessories that she never wears. She’s pretty much the girl who gets dressed up in all her cutest clothing and does her hair and makeup and looks entirely ready for prom... then sits around on her couch alone in her apartment eating ice cream and crying because she didn’t get invited to any parties and it’s Friday night.

**Jaghatai Khan - > Jayna Khatun**

Jayna’s life was pretty similar to Jaghatai’s. Uniting the tribes was more difficult and she had to prove herself a lot more because of being a woman, but she’s ~~blood of the dragon~~ a primarch. She’s up to the challenge and so much better than everyone else it takes their breath away.

She doesn’t change the status of women in her society in the short term so much as she gets considered an honorary man. She participated in the men’s ritual practices like scarring and ceremonies and whatnot. Once she got her position more consolidated, she would have though. Her adopted father had been trying to find her a husband before he died, but it was not happening. No man on the planet worthy of being her lord. Later, chieftains would offer their daughters anyway and she spent a lot of time brokering marriages to her foster brothers and men of other tribes under her banner. Lesbian activity was expected of her personally, but what secured alliances was children.

People are a little less likely to describe her in terms of “bloodthirsty savage” and more “fun Native girl who likes flying.” Because of this, she’s less into masculine stoicism and willing to cultivate a reputation in the Imperium for being fierce joy in flight. No one gets her jokes though. They’re terrible.

When not in power-armour, she usually goes topless or wears sarashi with men’s leggings and topknot. She knows the effect this has on people from most other cultures and is totally trolling them.

**Leman Russ - > Ljufa Russ**

Russ is the character with my most divergent headcanon based on genderswap. I have a lot of headcanons based around complicated and integrally linked Fenrisian ideas of magic and gender. She’s also the only one of these genderswapped characters I actually have significant passage of fanfic about lying around somewhere.

Ljufa Russ is a sorceress. Which is to say, she’s the best at women’s magic, because she’s the best at everything. If she were deficient at magic, she’d be deficient as a woman, as they see it on her planet. All primarchs are really powerful nascent psykers and I think Leman Russ definitely could use powers actively but he doesn’t because that’s not how he interfaces with them for cultural/psychological reasons.

Her specialties are things like seeing through the eyes of animals (or people), shape shifting, enchanting objects (particularly for protection), healing, and weaving fates. A most of her magic is either animal or cloth themed. She’s not a Rune Priest and would be offended by the suggestion she sings storms or incantations or casts runes, because those are men’s magics. (No one who isn’t Fenrisian thinks she ever makes sense.)

She’s an honorary man as often as she wants to be, because you don’t tell a primarch what she can or cannot do. That’s not a big deal, though, because of course a woman would want to be a man because masculine things are better. She uses magic a lot off the battlefield but not really on it, as part of complicated values about what is magic or not, when is it acceptable and by whom.

Her time with the wolves was about the same, but after being captured by the Russ, she became very close to her adopted mother even more than her father. Her mother taught her all the women’s arts of weaving and sewing and magic and so on. Her natural personality hasn’t changed, but she’s been socialised in ways encouraging patience, thrift, reflection, and wisdom rather than aggression. She never became king of the Russ after her father, though she did avenge him on the battlefield, but she became a sort of independent power in her own right outside of tribes as a wise-woman all kings turned to for advice.

If it’s an AU where she’s genderswapped and Magnus isn’t, they still don’t get along for exactly the same reasons as canon, but he’s even more confused why she’s a hypocrite who makes no sense whatsoever. (The actual fic involves her embarking on a plot to get Magnus to have sex with her in order to prove he’s enough of a man that he can use magic and not lose his man cred, and maybe she gets two birds with one stone and actually lands herself a husband worthy of her. Their interaction is all from Magnus’s or Thousand Son POV, so basically no one else has the slightest idea what the hell she’s doing.)

If an AU where they’re both genderswapped, I think they’d get along, because Ljufa would totally be cool with Magda using women’s magic in general and would love talking to her about it and would only have a few quibbles about some specifics she’d consider black magic and the appropriateness of using psychic-megadeath on the battlefield, which is for men and force of arms. Then Magda would teach her about modern feminism and it would be the scariest thing.

Ljufa wears your basic Viking women’s clothes when not in armour. So, a lot of layers of dresses, aprons, coats, cloaks, leggings, and stockings in fur and wool with bunches of pouches hung from broaches and jewellery. Do not insult her glass necklaces or insinuate that she could do better. Firstly, clearly there is no material more valuable and expensive than glass. Secondly, Vesta made them for her.

**Rogal Dorn - > Rosaria Dorn**

Rosa’s not very likable. The duty and honesty above all caused enough conflicts in canon, and would probably be seen as even more frigid and unpleasant rather than knightly and honourable. She’s considered bothersome and nitpicking and gets humoured and ignored mostly. “Needs to get laid” also gets mentioned a lot.

She doesn’t really care about anyone else’s opinion because she’s too busy listening to her own deep wells of guilt and shame and masochism. She’s almost as much of a perfectionist as Fulgrimna and is extremely critical of herself, which leads to a whole cycle of being angry at herself, then being reckless and getting hurt, then the pain making her angrier and making her screw up more, as she keeps throwing herself at whatever she’s supposed to be doing right.

She dresses like a frumpy middle aged school teacher and her wardrobe is entirely in gold and red. If she would look better in other colours, no one knows.

**Konrad Curze - > Josefine Curze**

Josefine Curze would basically be [The Ophelia](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheOphelia) of the series. Even if she weren’t supposed to be pretty canonically, she would get the best fanart.

It’s not that Konrad Curze codes so heavily female as some characters as written in canon, it’s that it would be really easy to twist the wording of things around so he was. (Not to get sidetracked by a full discussion of male versus female serial killers, I’ll just say, yeah, definitely male-typical behaviour. The things I know.)

The waif prophet who foams at the mouth and says cryptic things no one understands or believes. The fragile, tragic maiden in torn dresses with bare feet and long, artfully wild hair. The sweet-looking little girl with a dripping knife and slasher smile.

She wouldn’t be any more willing to let people close and would be try to act cold (when not actually gleefully killing people), but I think people would have an easier time identifying this is definitely a Broken Bird and she’s not remotely sane and needs help. Whether anyone would be _able_ to help her... There are no therapists. “Cute” would definitely come up a lot even when she was blood spattered (and she would get all this fanart like Gasai Yuno), and the seriousness of her violence would be downplayed and ignored heavily. There’d be more emphasis on “Well, those guys tried to rape her, so that gives her permission to/they deserve it when she then skins them alive.” At least she would believe this, not being the most reliable narrator ever, and it would be even harder for anyone to argue with her.

**Sanguinius - > Sanguinia**

Gotta say I have almost a complete blank page in my head when it comes to characterisation/headcanon for Sanguinius, so this isn’t going to be that interesting. People spend just as much time going on about how beautiful/amazing/perfect she is, only they don’t have to feel as embarrassed about it because they don’t have to worry about if this maybe makes them gay? She’s nice. That’s the first thing people say about her and she’s allowed to be nice. She’s also really good at fighting, but everyone still waxes poetry about how pretty and noble she looks when she’s ripping off heads, which she finds weird. She likes everyone to get along, but she’s not really conflicted about fighting. People guessing about her emotions tends to think that she is because pretty is supposed to mean peaceful, but they’re mostly wrong. She tries not to get into wars she doesn’t want to fight in the first place, but once she’s decided to do something, she gets pretty into it and enjoys herself and righteous fury and all.

It is unclear if the Blood Angels or the World Eaters get more PMS jokes made about them. This is because some people are assholes who like to call women hormone driven, irrational, and unstable. Sanguinia doesn’t want to tell people about the Red Thirst because she does not think they’ll take her seriously about the problem (Ishtar idolises her too much to credit her concerns) or they’ll start treating her like she’s hysterical (in the historical/etymological sense of the word).

**Ferrus Manus - > Ferra Manus**

Ferra is very butch. She got mistaken for a boy at first, but then puberty happened. They still tell stories on Medusa about her tendency to walk around topless. I’m sorry, my shirt was much less awesome than I am, and it caught on fire and now I don’t have a shirt. And the clans eventually stopped staring long enough to sew her a new bra.

She has a reputation for irresponsibility and doing her own thing without regard to anyone else. Do I look like I want to deal with your stupid leadership problems? I have things to punch. Her subordinates also have down to an art tracking her temper by long it’s been since she’s gotten laid. She still has considerable personality flaws like being critical, uncompromising, and wrathful, but men tend to be too distracted by her cleavage and their fantasies of a woman who will watch sports and drink beer with them then be interested in having steamy hot sex with them. This does not happen because they are not nearly badass enough for her, of course.

She likes her armour naturally, but otherwise she goes around in tank tops or sports bras and cargo shorts or sweatpants in grey or black. She has a buzz cut, the main difference between her and Natasha Stark (and the quicksilver hands of course). She looks like someone who has her computer in arm’s reach and absolutely no intention of getting out of bed today. And Fulgrimna’s just “...Get over here so I can rest my head in your massive bosom.” She’ll wear earrings as long as they’re small and all metal and gifts from Fulgrimna.

Fun fact I learned while writing this: “manus” is a rare feminine Latin noun ending in “-us,” which is why is it unchanged. Then I remembered that was true in Spanish as well, I really should have known that, duh.

**Angron - > Kali**

Kali gets even more credit for having been totally screwed over by the Emperor, but more condemnation for rejecting her Legion kids. There’s that insidious link between woman who fights being inherently one who is emotionally broken, while a man who likes to fight that’s just normal. It’s not meant that way, she’d be an extremely amazing fighter anyway, but she does possess both of those traits. She of all people seems to have grown up in the most gender-neutral environment.

It’s really obvious how totally screwed up she is, but at the same time the person she was supposed to be. People think of her in terms of maternal tendencies a lot, namely that she naturally had tons of them but then everything got so completely messed up. In another world she would take random strangers home and feed them big Italian meals, with relatives having to eat in shifts on every available surface because there are so many of them. Maybe because of the maternal connections, she’s really unsexualised by everyone else, even though she makes a lot of inappropriate dirty jokes. She’s also quite ugly, which probably affects that. There’d be more of an effort to fix her, I think, rather than everyone giving up on her, because if they hand her enough random babies, maybe something will click and she’ll get back to the way she should be.

I’m not sure how this goes, really. Ultimately her problems are a) not being able to move on and get over her survivor’s guilt, b) resulting nihilism, c) constantly physical pain all the time she spend not killing things, d) Khorne, e) being used just as badly to fight the Great Crusade as she was by her former slave masters. Forget it, just go read absurdfact’s No Nails AU (or reread _Betrayer_ if you hate yourself).

**Roboute Guilliman - > Robouta Guilliman**

Robouta Guilliman is basically exactly like her canon counterpart. Her friends would call her Robin, if she had any. If anything, she has even more of a reputation for being frigid and is even worse at cutting loose or being casual with people. On the other hand, her organisational skills are even more appreciated rather than being vaguely looked at sideways by people who think primarchs are for punching stuff and nothing else.

She and Lyra dress alike and have a significant family resemblance, but Robin’s not nearly as pretty. She’s plain and severe. She likes ultramarine blue dresses even when she’s not in her blue armour. She has some dresses with a lot of gold and white embroidery and jewellery that imitate the decorations on Astartes armour, but it doesn’t help and she honestly likes the plain ones better, or button-downs and blue jeans. She also wears her hair up in a bun. If nowhere else, Macragge’s noosphere’s version of pixiv has a ton of fanart of her with glasses and speculation of how she’d look with her hair down and generally a lot of “sexy librarian” look for her (not to mention the nsfw section *cough*).

**Mortarion - > Mara**

Mara swings back and forth between passivity and short-temper. On one hand, she spent a lot of her childhood being basically a doll at her adopted father’s side, though she was really competent at learning warfare. On some level still thinks she’s supposed to be sweet, ornamental flower Naomi, even though she’s completely rejected this identity. She gets depressed easily and just sort of sits in a corner moping. On the other hand, when she sees this behaviour in other people, she’s like “What the hell are you doing? There are asses to kick.” and she snatches up whatever farming equipment is lying around and pulls a Bill Door.

She’s really hard on herself and struggles to stand up for herself even when she’s unhappy with things and has a complete lack of positive reinforcement, or she could have turned out well. Maybe things would go better for her. After all, a guy who fails on his quest and needs to be saved is a total failure as a man and at best a sidekick. A girl who can’t succeed on her own and needs saved by the hero? Totally normal. With lower expectations, she might be less obsessed with her failure. She’d still probably brood a lot and not be able to get along with people easily, so... Not to mention some people do themselves no favours in the appearing-to-not-be-evil-tyrants department.

She goes back and forth about her appearance a lot. Sometimes she wears a porcelain mask over her face and sometimes she doesn’t and shows all her facial scars. She insecure about people judging her for not being pretty. Sometimes she pretends she doesn’t care, and sometimes she gets angry because fuck you all this is stupid, and she really wants this to be a total non-issue and people to like her or not because she’s her. She doesn’t say this out loud. Mostly she wears plain black button-up dresses with ankle-length skirts and long sleeves and gloves and sensible shoes (more Victorian than kawaii Goth loli).

**Magnus - > Magda**

Magda is another character who would change more in perception than reality. Which is to say, I think there’d be less emphasis on her as a woobie who just keeps getting screwed over by back luck and everyone being terrible to her and more on her being an arrogant bitch whose downfall was brought about by her own tragic flaws. Have no doubt she would have the full canon range of character flaws which I will not detail here (I love Magnus, my heart bleeds feels, but I am perfectly aware I find this person absolutely insufferable at the same time. Every damn cognitive bias I’ve had entirely study design and logic courses explaining to me not to do and not to let my collaborators do... )

In terms of background, the intellectual elite of Prospero seems to have been almost entirely male, but she was so impressive she was pretty much the Maria Agnesi of society. Magda’s actually really sexist against women in general because she picked up all these prejudices, but it would never occur to her to apply any of them to herself. She’s so condescending in general no one notices the difference anyway. She doesn’t really think of herself as a woman so much as a brain in a jar, unless it’s momentarily convenient for ritual magic reasons.

**Horus - > Ishtar**

This is a goddess of war and of getting her own way. Beautiful and vengeful, arrogant and insecure, she’s a very larger than life figure even among primarchs.

People’s opinion of Horus already varies wildly depending on the book. Regardless of internal chronology, it seems like the later it is in the novel series, the more likely everyone is to be “I knew it! What a jackass!” until it becomes unclear why anyone traitor or loyalist ever followed this person or put them in charge of anything, while in the earlier books everyone was all “♥ Bestest ever.” There’s more emphasis on how out of control and irrational she is after her fall to Chaos compared to Horus’s colder cruelty, because women are supposed to be more emotional.

Compared to _Horus Rising_ characterisation, I’d say people are a little more aware that Ishtar is playing them. They’re a bit more on-guard for her being manipulative, so they’re better at noticing she sets up entire situations to play good cop-bad cop so that by the time she’s done she gets exactly what she wants and it seems like someone else’s idea they compromised on. She gets called a bitch a lot, but I think would happen in canon too if not for Black Library’s weird tendencies where swearing is involved.

She’s still really charismatic and sends everyone into that kind of shock of “PI walks into the lab for the week, fixes everyone’s problems or explains to them what they should be doing instead, leaving them flabbergasted in awe, then breezes out five minutes later.” I really like that metaphor now that I’ve thought of it, because academia is where my experience lies and it fits really well against people I’ve known, particularly women who are highly respected and foremost experts in their field. She doesn’t run day-to-day operations because she has people for that, good people, and she has grant applications to write, but she organises the general flow of activity. Whenever she can spare a moment to work with someone, she has all the answers because she’s been around the block and knows everything. She gets all the credit and first authorship and is glamorous and always going to galas and networking and putting together joint projects with everyone. Her grad students adore her, and the undergrad menials are in awe and they don’t even know what’s going on here, and everyone would go above and beyond the call of duty if she asked them to. She throws the best parties. I will not name any names you could find on Google Scholar, but I could.

**Lorgar - > Laurelin Aurelia**

Laurelin is fun because she’s exactly the same as Lorgar in canon, but people treat her really differently. Most people in canon act like Lorgar’s basically a failure as a person because he wants to not fight wars and have his religion, and I find it fascinating because in my mind he codes really female and everyone gives him shit about this because he’s a failure as a man or something.

It sets gender relations back a century, but I feel like lots of people around her would be much more sympathetic and understanding of the exact same behaviour from a woman instead of a man. A man gets called a weakling a lot for not wanting to fight and people act like there’s something wrong with him, but a woman being forced to fight who doesn’t want to, that’s natural, right?

Her religious practices would also be seen more positively (Imperial militant atheism of the time aside). Real men are supposed to love Jesus where I’m from, but it’s still very different from the societal expectations of a good evangelical woman or a female medieval saint. I see Lorgar coding very heavily female in his religious expression too, but I lack the religious studies or sociology vocabulary to describe this in any detail.

On the other hand, male villains get a lot more fangirls for being woobies than female ones, so who knows? Her fall to Chaos would definitely get framed a lot more around the terms “hysterical” and “vengeful bitch.”

Laurelin still shaves her head, to show a rejection of vanity in the service to her god/gods. She likes her armour or plain white dresses, depending on the image she’s trying to project. She doesn’t seem very strong, but she pushes herself very hard when she’s doing it as part of her mission and underestimating her will get you a crozius to the face or utterly screwed over somehow. As she goes off the deep end, she increasingly callously uses people who love her, because she loves her gods more. She’s very pure, and pure does not mean good, and people love her and they want to follow her and bask in her light and they do terrible things for her. (My mental image of her draws heavily on Mina from War of Souls in Dragonlance, but I will save my long speech on why I love that character for another time.)

**Vulkan - > Vesta**

My headcanon for Nocturne is that blacksmithing is considered a primarily male occupation, but not without exception, particularly for the wife or widow of an artisan. Her adopted father trained her just like he did in canon, and she’s pretty similar to her canon incarnation.

With Vesta, I think people would put more emphasis on her connections to her family as well as more general compassion. She was very close to her extended adopted family and the whole community. I think this is true in canon too, I mean people mention it about her more. Her mother bear tendencies also come as less of a surprise to those who’ve met her.

Despite her name, Vesta most definitely isn’t a virgin, unlike most of her siblings. She instantly comes across as a lesbian. Of all of them, she’s the most interested in romantic relationships and children. If it weren’t for the Great Crusade she’d probably be happily married, and she and her wife would have a bunch of adopted children. She’s more sexual/physical than any of the others except Fulgrimna and is willing to have sex because it’s fun and she likes people and it’s not a huge deal, but definitely only with people she already likes/is friends with. If she were in a committed relationship with someone, she’d be a really dedicated and loyal spouse, but as it is, she’s also comfortable with non-monogamy with a number of people she’s fond of.

Like Ferra, out of armour she likes sleeveless shirts because her shoulders and arms are massive even for normal Astartes proportions. Unlike Ferra, she likes bright colours and patterns. Sometimes she wears long skirts and sometimes trousers depending on what’s more practical. She also likes bright belts and bandoliers and jewellery. Her fashion sense would probably look terrible and/or Slaaneshi on anyone else, but she pulls it off. Her hair is pretty long and she keeps it in tons of braids that she’s constantly styling in all sorts of ways. She’s has no particular feature to point out to call her pretty, but she’s comfortable in her skin in a way that makes her look more attractive than someone would expect from her features themselves.

**Corvus Corax - > Ravenna Corax**

Everyone already likes making fun of Corax as the emo kid. Ravenna would be almost universally referred to as “the gloomy emo girl stereotype.” She’s also considered really tsundere and impatient.

That’s what people think about her. Something of an exaggeration. No one thinks of her as a nerd since there are people like Magda to compare her to, but that’s how she thinks of herself. She wants to write her memoirs and treatises on political theory and become a tweed-clad university professor or something when the Crusade is over. She tells the best jokes, but no one notices. She’s really good at tactics, but makes it look easy and wins so pre-emptively the other guy never has time to make a show of it and doesn’t brag about it, so no one appreciates her skill. Despite doing covert ops, she’s very trusting with anyone she doesn’t immediately dislike, and wants to be friendly and for people to like her. She’d be pretty susceptible to peer pressure, but not from Ishtar because they can’t stand each other.

She has short hair that’s incredibly fluffy, or she could gel it to lie flat. She mostly wears black and thinks cargo pants and hoodies are the best and most practical non-armour clothes in the world, which does not help the image she presents. I want to say she has really green eyes, in the hope someone out there will get my Darkangel reference.

**Alpharius/Omegon - > Alpharia/Omegan**

The Alpha Legion definitely gets more sexualised and there’s more talk about seduction. (That’s true in most of what I’ve written here, but I’m not sure how much of it is the sexualisation of female character in general and how much me being a slash fanfic writer. On the other hand, Graham McNeill.)

They get some of the slut shaming the Emperor’s Children do. At the same time, people are less surprised and offended that oh, they’re going to use underhanded tactics, are they? They’re very comfortable playing with what people think of them.

Other than that, not much different. I always imagine these characters as a bunch of internet trolls who high-five each other a lot. I have far too many mental images of them painting each other’s nails or using a ruler and magnifying glass to make sure they have the exact same haircut.


	2. Ljúfa Thengirsdóttir of the Russ, the Valkyrja Fenryka

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one where Russ is the best on Fenris at women’s magic, because she’s the best at everything, but she and Magnus still manage to have issues (origin story, Russ+Magnus WIP, B2)

A woman captured in a raid would be made a thrall, perhaps a wife if she were beautiful enough or the man who won her had not one yet. No man would admit to it, but it was all they could do to keep the wild-woman in a cage. No man could take her to wife and live to tell the tale, which sent murmurs of unrest through them, for such a thing would be shameful and cause them dishonour were it to be believed.

King Thengir did not want to loose his prize, so said, ‘Her in that cage, she is an animal. Any man who takes her for wife is as a man who ruts with a sheep, or a wolf.’

This satisfied and since she ceased to be an object of uneasiness or controversy, she ceased to be of much interest, except when there was a guest from another tribe or kingdom to be impressed.

As with most things considered beneath the attention by the men, the human-wolf was turned over to the care of the women.

Thengir’s wife Eir was a woman of boundless patience. As the wild-woman paced on all fours in her cage and gnawed on the bars more than she did the food left for her, as the hundreds of wounds from the poison arrows that had been stuck in her slowly healed, Eir set up her spindle beside it and wove. She spun wool thread with her distaff and spindle and dyed it blue and red and yellow. She wove the cloth for her household across a wide frame, for clothing and tapestries. She wove banners to bring her husband to victory and sails to bring him home.

She gave the wild-woman no notice, or so it seemed. The other women of her household joined their queen in her weaving room of course, where no man would dare enter for fear of being called no true man. They could not forget the wild-woman so easily, or appear to, for she growled and howled and gnashed her teeth and made the bars of her cage creek when she leaned on them. They called her Ljót among themselves, a name often given to the ugly hag in tales, the practitioner of black magic.

Eir was at her looms everyday as she waited. Waited for the wild-woman’s eyes to stop on her in her daily routine. Waited for the woman to fix on what she was doing and wonder what it was.

The feeling of such intense eyes on her was not comforting, but she bore it day after day. And after a tenday of it, she began to speak. Quietly, she began to explain all the little details of what she was doing, like she would to a child just old enough to card wool rather than being carried in a sling like a baby.

Suspicious eyes followed each twist and draw of her spindle, each warp and weave of her cloth. Eir spoke of how she put threads in exactly the right place to make the pattern, as the Norns wove the threads of the future. How she, like any good _spá_ -wife saw the fabric of the future and wove protection and fortune for her husband into it. A man would attribute his victories only to this own force of arms, but he would take his wife’s tokens ‘for her piece of mind’. He could say whatever he would to save face as long as he returned to her.

The queen sung to her, and sometimes the wolf-woman howled back. But sometimes she sung back, tunelessly and wordlessly. Eir left her uncarded wool and combs in her cage along with her food. The woman ate all the food, for once, though she was gaunt with hunger and her pack had been starving. She sniffed the wool, chewed on it, but she tried eventually running it between the carding combs like the youngest girls did.

The spindle was harder and the wild-woman broke three in her big hands and her jaws. Her threads were lumpy and uneven and flew off her distaff to unravel. She eyed the beautiful cloth on Eir’s loom for long stretches of time, then fed wool into her spindle again.

Her hands became steady, her rhythm turning the spindle sure. Her thread became thin and smooth, tightly ravelled and unbroken. Once she had the feel of it, her thread was better than that of many of the girls who had been spinning for years.

Eir brought her a small loom, one with worn pegs from all the young maidens of the household who had used it over the years. Eir did not slow down her own work, but she knew the woman was intensely watching her hands move as she picked the thread of the weft through the warp with her shuttle. The woman moved slowly and deliberately at first, setting with the lines of the warp and pulling each thread over and under, over and under. The cloth this made had holes in it from her fingers getting in the way and missed lines, but slowly, slowly it grew.

As she became accustomed to the work, the woman’s hands moved faster, as she no longer had to think about each individual thread. She sat at her little loom for hours a day, and spent the rest spinning herself thread. She made no sound except a little humming sometimes and looked nowhere else but at Queen Eir. She ate cooked food, even foods beside meat. She looked younger, like a girl hardly into womanhood when she sat still and her monstrous stature and feral rage no longer overshadowed her appearance.

Eir gave her no dyes, but she did bring white or gray wool instead of brown, to let the woman sniff at it and watch the patterns it made as she wove it into her cloth. Her first few tries at making designs, she lost the pattern of what she was doing and what she would be doing in a few rows, and ended up with lines or lumps of one colour instead of a design.

As she grew to be able to plan now for what something would look like later, she copied the knots and whirls decorating Eir’s cloth. She wove geometric shapes as her cloth grew, then less regular shapes. She grinned, all teeth, at the unmistakable silhouette of a white wolf on a field of brown.

Eir sewed cloth into garments for the household, leaving the wild-woman a new bone needle for the work. The other women and girls rarely noticed the woman in the cage anymore now that she was familiar and quiet. Sewing the fabric was much easier than weaving it, but Eir made careful show of measuring the size of the growing garments to herself and others. Eir sewed undertunic smocks, overtunics, apron-dresses, caftan coats, stockings, slippers, fabric belts, cloaks, mittens, fillets diadems--all the layers of clothing a Fenrisian woman wore against the cold.

The wolf-woman sewed all of these things, and when they were ready she put them on over her nakedness and said, ‘Mother, I am done.’

All the other ladies in the room started, for they realised that the animal in the cage must have understood them for a long time to speak so easily without accent or hesitation.

Eir said, ‘Am I your mother or is your mother a wolf?’

The woman considered and said, ‘My mother who was a wolf nursed me and taught me to be a wolf. You are my mother who taught me to be a human.’

Eir went before her husband, Thengir the king of the Russ, and told him what had transpired. Thengir decreed that she was to be acknowledged as human and accepted that she was to be the daughter of his house and named her Ljufa, for she was clearly beloved of his wife as if she had given birth to her.

Finally out of the cage, Ljufa ran wild with energy. She climbed to the thatch roof of her father’s meadhall and jumped off. She terrified the sheep and goats in their pens. Now that she had started talking, she babbled like a floodgate had opened. Why did ice float but iron sink? Why had Ingilborg divorced her husband? Why was limestone best for carving amulets to staunch bleeding? Why did the eye of the moon wolf sometimes block the eye of the sun wolf? Which plant went into that blue dye?

Eir patiently instructed her daughter in all a maiden’s tasks. Already she wove faster and stronger cloth than all the ladies of her father’s household except her mother. Ljufa wove the most subtle and potent of spells. She embroidered images that seemed to leap from the cloth. She could organise the thrall-women to cook a feast when a mastodon or kraken was killed and make cheese, skyr, and butter from goat’s milk. She loved the ribbons and shiny broaches and necklaces of glass beads she saw given as the king’s daughter. Yet, many a young man was dissuaded from setting off to do brave deeds that his king did not wish done by the offer of his daughter’s hand in marriage should he succeed.

Ljufa ranged far from her father’s halls, usually alone. She laughed at her mother’s worries and waved off her suggestions that she at least take a horn to call for help. ‘What animal is there that I was not greater than even when I was nothing but a wolf? What raiding party could take me without a hundred men and the most potent poisons their wives could brew?’

Ljufa was always bringing home gifts for her parents: a mastodon she had killed with tusks thrice as long as even she was tall, oysters filled with pearls from volcanic vents, honey from wild hives, good red clay. She brought two huge wolves home with her, where they slept under the benches as tame as any well-bred hound after she growled at them.

Her mother saw her bond with the animals who had once been her pack, and sent Ljufa to all the wise women of the kingdom to learn their magic arts. Eir was greatly skilled in _spá_ magic and could see many strands of _ørlög_ , but she knew not _seiðr_. Her daughter had little interest in summoning spirits to ask them things she see with her own _spá_ , but she excelled at many other _seiðr_ magics. She could heal ailments of the body and mind, brew potions of all sorts, move the weather, cast illusion, and cause madness or forgetfulness.

No woman was her peer in _gand-reið_ : she could free her spirit from her body and take control of a wolf or a raven or drake and range far and wide. She was a wolf. She could think as a wolf, see as a wolf, be as a wolf. As a _hamhleypa_ , a skin-changer, she could throw a wolf-skin cloak over her shoulders and transform into the form of a monstrous wolf that towered over even Freki and Geri. _Horo_ , they called her in distant villages, the wolf who steals all our apples.

She cast no runes and sung no incantation, for these were things were things of men. Besides, she couldn’t carry a tune in the least. She was never taught to fight, but what need had she for instruction?

When her father fell to treachery in a feud, she said, as was proper for a maiden of the Russ, ‘Have I a brother here to take wergild for my father? Then I shall claim it myself.’

No man could stand against Ljufa of the Russ, though she fought with her bare hands. She tore off limbs and heads, bit deep into blood and bone, went through shields like they were the thin layer of ice over a spring in the morning. She had no armour, but the cloth of her own weaving turned away axes, blunted swords.

She brought all the loot of the battlefield to her mother for her property in her widowhood and to buy her own bride-price and well did Eir live all the rest of the days of her life. Ljufa herself absented herself for a long time as the Allthing of tribes declared a new king, running with wolves, but no wolf attacked a man even on the coldest and darkest days anywhere within many, many leagues. Her mother helped her set up her own house out between the cliffs and the fields of ice, with hearth stones and looms and forge and goat pens.

For her household, Ljufa ranged far and wide to find those she wanted. Young maidens she offered fosterage and they learned the women’s arts from her as she had from her mother, and they learned of axe and spear to follow her where she would go and to avenge their family’s honour when they had no male relatives left. She taught them, so they had no peer in other tribes. Young men left for dead on the battlefield she would heal and take as her thralls, until they proved worthy to buy their freedom and be adopted into her family. Valkyrja, they called her. One of the legendary swan-goddesses who brought the worthy dead from the battlefield into the meadhalls of the afterlife.

No king made war without consulting Ljufa Thengirsdóttir of the Russ as they would a völva sorceress-priestess. A ship that launched without its captain hearing her words would find itself sinking into the kraken-filled depths to the coldest hells, while one that heeded her would navigate the straight path to the halls of their enemies.

*

There came a time that the rune-lights in the sky fell outside the seasonal patterns, and many kings and rune priests gathered at the halls of the oracle for an Althing, for if anyone could see the pattern of these strange threads of fate, it was she.

These men knew each other, by sight or reputation, and many had blood oaths against each other, but they had broken her bread under her roof and drunk from the mead horn her shieldmaidens brought around. They knew very well that a stranger had come among them.

The stranger took cool measure of the woman who continued to look only to her spinning distaff as though unaware of all around her, though the wolves at her feet kept a watchful eye over everything.

‘Eirsdóttir.’

Ljufa shook her head and growled under her breath, hearing the matronymic as the insult it usually was, but not quite being able to dispute it. An adopted foundling couldn’t quite yell ‘Are you calling me a bastard, my mother a adulteress, and my father a cuckold?’ and issue a challenge to a duel (or three) on those grounds. She did choose diplomacy eventually, ‘You do honour to my late mother.’

‘Your mother deserves honour.’ The stranger moved straight to the point. ‘Be völva to me and serve me alone.’

She snorted, for many a king had made such a demand of her. ‘I’ve never met a man so worthy. You, I’ve heard neither your name nor your reputation.’

‘Only a braggart needs such things. I’ll prove my worth by my own hands.’

‘You may be a braggart still, if you can’t measure up. What will it be? Wrestling? The axe? The spear?’

‘That would be no contest. I could even outdo you at the loom, let alone men’s work.’

‘Try me then, and when you loose I’ll have you in skirts as the least of my thralls.’

Now, the many kings of Fenris did not watch them weave, for such would be unmanly and they were not so confident that none would dare call them _ergi_ as this stranger. No wonder, for they would later learn he was searching for his twenty sons and daughters.

Of the final products, Ljufa’s they saw first. Their wives bowed their heads in acknowledgement of the skill of her weaving, but all could see the raw power barely restrained in her design. The wolf standing over its kill, its muzzle and the snow stained red with blood. Ready to leap at any that might interfere with its devouring of its kill.

But there was no contest really. All those who gazed upon the stranger’s tapestry were drawn into it. The entire galaxy unfolded around them, each star and nebula, shining in a sea of black. Each planet, shining with the light of souls. Blood spilled on world after world, and here the Master of Mankind who would make it all his own.

And Ljufa laughed, for she knew she had been defeated, and swore fealty to him.

She set her people immediately into preparing a feast to welcome her long-lost father from the stars. They would take this sky iron and make their spears of it, take these star ships and make war upon the Great Ocean beyond Fenris.

But she looked at the unfinished end of the tapestry he had woven and saw shapes in the thread there. Countless victories, yes, but all futile in the final defeat. In the tangles of thread she saw patterns from the saga of the _sunubana_ , the son-killer, and knew these for omens.

They took to the sky: Russ, primarch, warrior-sorceress; her wolves, the brothers of her heart; her valkyrjur and einherjar, shining daughters and shining sons.

*

Magnus had been positively ecstatic at the opportunity to finally meet one of his siblings who shared his interest into the subject of the powers of the mind.

Not everyone shared his enthusiasm to make closer acquaintance with the Wolves of Fenris, however.

‘I should have blasted him into the stratosphere. He was talking with T’Kar just fine; what should my being a woman have to do with his primitive rune stones? How did such a sexist pig get in an army led by a Lady Primarch anyway?’

‘Calm yourself, Siona.’

Siona Ahriman’s choleric temper was still clear on her face and in her aura, but she took a deep breath and rose into the Enumerations.

‘Was Wyrdmake giving anyone else trouble or just you?’

‘I suppose Maat stormed off from a conversation with him earlier, but I hadn’t been listening at the time. But his insults to me were very specific.’

‘All the same, I won’t have you challenging him to a personal duel when there’s a war to fight. I’ll bring it up with Russ when I see her.’

‘No, my lord, don’t bother.’ Her embarrassment and desire to deal with the problem herself was palatable. ‘I don’t need my honour defended like a barbarian princess valued only for her maidenhood.’

Magnus couldn’t resist the paternal urge to see to the well-being of his favourite daughter, though. A parent shouldn’t have favourites among his children, but Ahriman had always stood out, even half-dead of the flesh-change when he’d first met her and holding on by sheer force of will. His daughters had taken the flesh-change even worse than his sons, leaving just nine of them by the time they and their thousand brothers had landed on Prospero.

‘Our legions must be able to work together if we are to fight together. Their ways may be strange and primitive, but I am sure that once our difference are smoothed over they will have some unique insights into the world of the spirit, as we will have much to show them about the efficient use of their powers.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

She bowed to his greater wisdom, though she was clearly still displeased about the situation. Magnus might have continued the discussion, but he felt the shift in the Thousand Sons’ camp and the neighbouring Space Wolves’ one without any need for a messenger.

‘My sister has returned. I do not wish her to feel that I slight her by making her wait for our introduction.’ She had sent only a small party with a message that she was busy killing things when they had landed, but responding in kind would hardly be the way to teach her proper polite, civilised behaviour.

The sentries around her war-camp were hardly going to challenge him, as though there was any doubt who he was, but all eyes certainly were on him. The humans tried to look away, as though anyone could convincingly act indifferent to the presence of a primarch, but the dogs--the wolves--growled openly. Even the crows and raven feasting on carrion turned to look, and he felt distant eyes watching through them.

Her pavilion was a more permanent structure than the rawhide tents her followers favoured. It was large enough to suggest it also doubled as their assembly hall and command centre. The wood of the walls was local, as were the grasses thatching its roof and strewn over the ground.

‘The lady is in the _dyngja_ ,’ one of her personal guards informed him.

‘I can find her.’

The woman’s face took on an expression of total incomprehension as he walked past. He hardly needed directions when he could feel her aura like a winter blizzard, like a compass could sense north.

Russ had shed her armour already, though there were still blue traces of xeno blood in the long red-gold braids that extended from beneath her veil. Instead she wore layers of navy and white dresses and many strings of glass beads as she sat on a solid bench before a loom.

Her eyes locked on him, pale blue or grey like very clear ice. She looked surprise, but she could hardly have not been aware of his approach. Then she looked angry.

‘What are _you_ doing _here_?’

Magnus was unsure of the source of her ire at first, but his senses informed him that this room was thick with the residue of magic. ‘I apologise for intruding in your workroom. I did not see any wards.’

‘You come into the women’s quarters, into the very weaving room and speak of a woman’s magic? I didn’t want to hear rumours you were _seðmænd_ , but this...’ She had risen to her feet. ‘ _Níðingr_ , _seiðskratti_ ,’ she snapped in her own language.

‘Sister?’

She growled as she stormed past him without another word. The two huge wolves that followed at her heels snapped at him as they ran after her. Trying to read her aura was like standing in a thunderstorm. Instead, he cast out a warning to his children not to try, lest their minds be torn apart by the savage violence of her power.

Russ paused to collect neither her armour and weapons nor further escort. Not that she needed such things to be deadly, but it was still a sign of a reckless disregard for planning.

With a roll of thunder, it began to rain. The sky had been clear not long before, and the air quite a few degrees warmer. Magnus let a few cold drops fall on his face before putting up a kine shield.

That had been an inauspicious meeting.

*

Russ did not return to her camp that night, and by the next morning her children were gone too, to flank the enemy from the opposite side, or so the more diplomatic of them said. The rest left without a word.

Ahriman could tell Magnus wasn’t in a towering rage as easily as she could tell it wasn’t raining anymore before she walked outside. Of course they shouldn’t allow themselves to become upset over this. What did it matter if barbarians shunned them, as many superstitious and backwards people across the Imperium shunned psykers?

Privately, Ahriman suspected her lord was bewildered by the whole affair. The Wolves had been watchful and rude but tolerant for a few hours, then he had managed to send his sister storming off in a snit within a minute? She hardly considered herself good with people, but she doubted that behaviour lent itself to simple interpretation by anyone.

Everyone already a theory. She had no desire to join in. It wasn’t her job to second-guess primarchs or to know their minds.

Ahriman had a war to fight.


	3. Post-Duel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> fem!Sigismund/Sevatar (B1, nsfw, WIP)

‘I won, you lost, and I’m always ready to go again.’ Sieglinda reached for the black sword across her back in anticipation.

‘It was a tie,’ Sevatar felt the need to remind her. He still kept expecting her to be angrier. He still didn’t understand why she’d laughed and congratulated him for a good fight instead of trying to kill him, but he didn’t understand people now did he. She was better. He wasn’t about to admit to it, but she had to know he’d cheated because he couldn’t win.

Her eye twitched. ‘I should pay you back for that, you cheating whoreson.’

‘Nothing’s cheating if it works, and making your living on your back’s not the worst thing you could be doing where I’m from.’ His primarch didn’t, had never turned tricks, but he had no obligation to defend her honour.

‘I’d much rather fight. Sounds boring to live that way.’

‘What a waste.’ He leered at her to illustrate. She’d put on a top in Imperial Fist yellow now, but he’d spent the last thirty hours staring at her well-endowed as well as well-muscled chest with her only in a sports bra and a short skirt over a loincloth on her. At the time he’d only been thinking about her balance and weight distribution, but there were other things he _could_ dwell on.

With her hair in long, blonde pigtails and her breasts straining against too tight lacing and her long legs, she looked amazingly like a pin-up centrefold. Lusty up-hive schoolgirls gone wild, or something. He had definitely jacked off to girls who looked like that growing up and could easily call up and edit slightly pre-made fantasies from the back of his mind of her pink lips wrapping around his cock.

Sieglinda moved to hit him. He dodged out of the way and she only ended up denting the wall, but he wasn’t expecting her follow-through would involve her entire body, so she managed to dislocate his knee with hers and shove him against the bulkhead.

That left them rather close, but when he ground against her she didn’t pull back in disgust or hit him again. She pressed back just as aggressively, not letting him use sexuality against her. He was surprised; he’d heard the Imperial Fists were stuck up and repressed, but then again nothing in her highly offensive fighting style had suggested stoic wall-builder.

‘So you do want it? You’re the kind of girl who talks tough, but likes being held down and fucked dirty?’

She kneed him in the groin and tugged his hair hard. ‘I think I’ll be holding you down unless you can cheat your way out of it again.’

‘Doesn’t bother me one bit as long as I get inside you.’

She grinned, rubbing against him until he groaned, and kissed him all pressure and teeth. ‘Works for me,’ she said, pulling him into her assigned quarters. 

Sevatar had never fucked one of his sisters before, or a cousin for that matter. He knew what to do and it wasn’t like he cared either way, but he hadn’t happened to. There weren’t many female Astartes in the VIIIth. Let outsiders think whatever they liked, as long as they didn’t think the truth. They hadn’t taken gender into account at first in recruiting, but they did now. Plenty of other Legions embraced their home planets’ sexism openly. The truth was gene-seed degeneration, it was screaming madness and clawing their own eyes out. You heard rumours tossed around sometimes about women being a little too close to the primarchs, getting a little too much and their non-primarch bodies being unable to handle it. You heard rumours about the XVth or the IXth and why there were only a handful of women left in the whole Legions, the vague whispers when a Legion was putting a lot of effort into keeping their secrets secret.

Sevatar sometimes claimed to have fucked his primarch. She knew and found it amusing. They had not. Oh they flirted, but the few times she’d taken the insinuations a little further, he’d straight up told her that whatever her intentions going into this were, there was no possibility of her not freaking out, changing her mind, and killing him midway through. Not that he wouldn’t, mind, but he preferred her killing him on purpose someday than her doing it because she forgot her own nature trying to play around. It wasn’t that she liked women (liked as in didn’t kill), but she certainly could never bring herself to let a man touch her even if she’d wanted to. He was pretty sure she was a virgin too, however many gangsters had ever _tried_ to rape her.

Whatever his level of personal experience with women, he knew how to turn a trick himself well enough to guess the details. Sieglinda’s shirt and bra had gone the way of her sword and she was still in the process of kicking off her skirt as she pushed him down onto the cot. He reached up put one hand at the back of her head to assist in their kisses and ran the other across her chest.

She made a little sound and he did it again, cupping her breast and bringing his mouth down to suck on a nipple. He bit at the soft skin and she cursed loudly and breathlessly and bucked her hips against his.

Sieglinda retaliated by wrapping a hand around his cock and stroking roughly. Sevatar writhed under her, even more so when she ground their hips together so he could feel how wet she was.


	4. Braids

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyra wears her hair down these days. (A, fem!Lion/fem!Luther, fem!Guilliman, UE-era and post-Heresy)

‘I could do yours too,’ Guilliman offered politely.

‘What?’ asked the Lioness.

‘Your hair is very pretty, but I imagine it must blow in your face sometimes,’ she said, sliding a last pin into place about her head by muscle memory.

Guilliman didn’t have hair that people could wax poetry about without lying. It was blonde, too pale to be called brown instead. Lyra had hair that got called a waterfall of spun gold or sunlight on fall leaves or whatever metaphor seemed most artistic at the moment.

Guilliman’s hair curled more than hers did, and it made her braid look a bit messy after a long day, so she’d rebraided it and pinned it back. Those were probably the traditional braid patterns of the Battle-Queens of Macragge.

On cue, Guilliman added, ‘I only know how to do the traditional braid patterns of the Battle-Queens of Macragge, but if you don’t mind.’

‘No,’ said Lyra sharply. Sharper than she’d intended, more than she’d meant to give away.

Guilliman eyed her, surprised by her vehemence. ‘That was a no, you don’t want me to, not a you don’t mind,’ she said, though she left a hint of uncertainty in her tone, in case the Lioness wanted to tell her she’d made a mistake. ‘May I ask why?’

None of her business. ‘That’s not how things are done on Sycorax,’ she lied.

It was, in fact, exactly how things were done on Sycorax. A child or young maiden would wear her hair loose, or an old woman who no longer fought in the forests, but a knight in the prime of her life preferred braids. She had worn them, until... until there was no one to do them up for her. Like a widow, some whispered, but they quickly learned not to do so in her presence, for she would not tolerate even indirect acknowledgement of that missing person at her side, and that hadn’t been what happened.

_(Hands in her hair, brushing it out, as firm and purposeful as when she swung a sword. Lyra would force herself still, avoid showing weakness or impropriety beside the respect of a knight for her closest sister who was aiding her. She’d been taught better than this. She must not lean into it or sigh, or she might stop--)_

But Guilliman wouldn’t know. Her style had since become popular in her Legion, those children who had been supplicants too young for an adult’s braid before becoming transhumans.

‘I’m fine, Robouta,’ she added. ‘It won’t matter in the least if I put my helmet on.’

‘Alright then.’

She wondered how their mother had made them. The Lioness had been first. A prototype of a design she had improved later? Did the Empress regret how she had made her first daughter--was she only a flawed creation who could fight any war but could not inspire love or loyalty? Was that why each sister was so different than the one who came before?

The Lioness only knew she had never wanted to be beautiful, except when Lucille told her she was.

*

‘Foolish girl,’ Lucille said, Lyra’s head pulled down into the crook of her neck. The primarch didn’t lean down to accommodate her, but slumped bonelessly, a creature that could not support her own weight. ‘How ever did you manage without me? Couldn’t save your mother or your planet or your Legion. Couldn’t even braid your own hair without me to do it, could you? Have you been wearing it down ever since?’

Lyra did not respond.

‘I’ll fix it for you. Then you’ll be presentable. I always told you you had to look your station, when you would have chopped it off like a drudge or a man. You’re too beautiful to not be ready to pose for a war banner at any moment, I said. You look pretty and I’ll do the talking.’

Lyra’s hair wasn’t clean and that should be fixed first, but Lucille would just have to make do, wouldn’t she? Each movement of her hands through Lyra’s hair left new streaks of blood in it, red on gold. Lyra’s blood. She couldn’t drop her, she had to keep her here on her shoulder, or she’d sink into an entire pool of it. It would be alright. The blood wouldn’t stop flowing, but her tears wouldn’t stop coming either, and, eventually, enough of them would wash it away.

‘I’m sorry, Lyra. I should have taught you to do it yourself, but I thought I’d always be there. I’ll show you, okay? When you wake up.’


	5. Weaving Fate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Ljufa of the Russ weaves fate, like a woman but also like a primarch. (fem!Russ, fem!Magnus, B1)

Magda was mad at her and Ljufa was trying not to be mad back. She’d tried to explain, damn it! Maybe Magda was right that the problem existed only in her head, but when they were talking about mind over matter that was rather important.

She liked the gift, really she did. The threads were fine and smooth and the colours brighter than any dye on Fenris. She wasn’t an idiot; she could see the benefits of post-Industrial Revolution machine-craftsmanship. It would made fine garments, or machines could make those too, but it was useless for magic.

Magda said _You don’t need that metaphor_ , but she did. There were things she could do without her distaff, certainly, but if she was going to make coats that turned aside bullets as well as armour or cloaks of invisibility, she needed to have carded and spun the wool herself. She appreciated the spinning wheel compared to a hand-spindle, she appreciated a flying shuttle compared to the hand-thrown shuttle on her old looms.

So like Magda. Always so eager to replace everything with something better, faster, more efficient that she neglected the soul. Sloppy. She had the brute force to get away with it, but... She thought she could _take_ from daemons. They understood better on Fenris. It was submitting, as a woman did to a man, which was why only a woman could practice such a thing and only a wise woman could gain power from it, as a wife did from her husband, all those things men would never speak of even if they noticed.

Ljufa’s magic was hers all the way through. Her sheep were kept and fed and sheared within her own household and she turned the wool into cloth with her own hands every step of the way, as did her ladies who were sorceresses like proper women rather than sword-maidens.

Her hands were moving in familiar patterns across the loom, and she’d rather they weren’t. She’d rather be making something practical, though if she made a mistake in her distraction she’d have to go back and untangle it and weaken the flow of the magic. Better to weave something useful if unimportant for her household than more dangerous magics.

The danger made her nostrils flare and all her senses sharper. Her anger sharpened, but it wasn’t really directed at Magda anymore.

They were doomed. She had always known, since she had met her father. She saw the pattern of fate clearly, a war almost won but descending into a snarl of knots at the last moment because the weaver had gotten careless and lost sight of the overall pattern. The whole tapestry would be ruined because Magda--and people like her--would be careless, would lose sight of threads and think they didn’t matter, wouldn’t put in place now all the strands that would be needed for later, and Ljufa wanted to save her from that more than anything.

Her adopted mother had been a wise woman, but Ljufa Eirsdóttir was still a wild and feckless girl who didn’t understand her. She didn’t understand why women would wait at home for their fates to be decided by their men on a distant battlefield; she would take up the sword. She didn’t understand why men found it romantic to say ‘If this be my fate, then I am doomed. To side idly by would be shameful.’ A woman could see wyrd. It was only the thread spun by the norns. A woman could grasp it and weave it in her own tapestry instead, if she dared.

Ljufa knew she was being reckless too. Men would disapprove, of course, but that was why these were the secret and sacred mysteries of women, not the honour of the battlefield. It was that for all she was a skilled seðkoner, she feared she too was relying on power over wisdom. A woman knew how to endure. She knew how to use wise counsel at the right moment. She knew when to let nature run its course. Ljufa didn’t know what she was _supposed_ to be doing, only what she wanted to. She was a primarch: she was made so that imposing her will on the world around her was easy.

The pattern grew on her loom. She could see what was already done and what would happen next as clearly, magic moving with her shuttle as easily as the weft threads through the warp. She could see the pattern that wanted to form, but she wouldn’t let it. Her hands. Her loom. She would weave her will and make it so.


	6. Husbands and Wives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyra wants Luther, but it’s going to be on her terms or not at all. (B1, fem!Lion/Luther)

‘Use your words, Lyra,’ Ishtar had told her. ‘You keep your secrets well. I don’t know your mind, and as your sister you would think I would have more insight than anyone else. I know you had to learn--I can’t imagine what it must have been like pretending to be a man all those years--but things are different now. You’re a primarch. The universe will fall over itself to give you what you want, if you only tell it what that is.’

Lyra grit her teeth. Damn Ishtar for coming too close to the truth and reminding her of things she didn’t like to remember. Damn Ishtar for persuading her to be here, doing this, anyway. Her sister at least was obnoxiously good at getting what she wanted, which explained why she projected such things on others.

She looked down at Luther and he didn’t meet her eyes, didn’t look up in concession to the fact she was taller. ‘My lady.’ He let the words hang in the air. She couldn’t hear any emotion in the words whatsoever. Maybe the fault was hers, for not being good enough with people. Maybe he was simply good at the techniques for hiding everything, as he had taught her as a child, the ideal she had always tried to live up to.

‘Luther.’ The silence stretched. Was she a coward, which her sister Guilliman claimed was impossible? If this was fear, she disliked it. _Think about it logically,_ she told herself, _you’ve already lost him. You’re not going to make it worse._ ‘I can’t be your wife.’

He blinked at the non sequitur and tried to place it. ‘This is what this has been about? This is why you sent me away? Those were foolish words, I know, from when we were both so young, before the Emperor came to Caliban, before I knew what you were and how much more there is for you. You hate me for that presumption?’

She’d managed to do it wrong, anyway. He was angry, hurt, pleading? She didn’t know. ‘I don’t hate you. But here is the crux of it: I cannot love you as a woman loves a man.’ She lied, but so be it. Enough was true. ‘I am what I am, a daughter of the Emperor, a lady of war, and I cannot be anything before that. As your wife, I would vow to obey and honour you. That is what I need from you: obedience. I am your liege and you are my vassal. I will have you on my terms or not at all. A wife guards the keep while her lord hunts in the forest. If you cannot love me and obey me as if you were the woman, then I cannot have you as my lover or my subordinate, cannot have you in my Legion. I wish I really had been a man, so you could love me as a brother!’

Lyra realised she had nearly shouted those last words. She bit her lip, tried to reign the anger back in. Too real, too raw. She hated herself enough for the amount of time she’d spent fantasising about being a man, about Luther treating her like he’d used to, when he’d been able to forget the truth, when they’d been brothers. She dreamed of being his man in unguarded moments--she’d been to other planets, ones where men could be together that way openly, as well as in scandalous whispers. Ones where the dynamics of women and men were differently too, but she was too much of Caliban to speak in metaphors other than those she’d been raised with.

Luther was staring at her. He took a step towards her, but stopped. She was grateful for that. She was so grateful that he didn’t try to embrace her, to treat her like a woman. She would have hit him.

‘I have done you a great wrong, Lion.’ She felt her breath catch at the name no one had used since the Emperor came. Her father used the first name Luther had given her. _Lyra._ Announced it to the world. Told them all what she was. ‘I told myself it was for your sake, once the Great Hunt was over. I told myself I had forced you to keep your secrets so I could use you as a knight, and now that I no longer needed you for that, I could help you to be happy. I told myself, and you, that you would prefer peace and femininity. But it was only ever me being selfish again, me wanting you as a woman, me wanting you because you’re beautiful. You are not a woman, dearest Lion, Lyra. You are a weapon.’

She didn’t know if that was an insult or not. She wasn’t offended. Yes, that was what she was. That was what the Emperor had made her. A weapon and a leader of weapons. She couldn’t tell his intent as well, not when he shook his head and laughed at himself.

‘You ask me to be a woman for you, ask me what so many woman throughout history have been asked. To be your helper, your supporter, to give myself to you and your dreams and your authority. I, a brave and courageous knight, baulk at it. I am weak. Too weak and prideful and selfish to be a woman. Yet I want to try. I don’t want to lose you again. I beg of you to cherish and honour me back.’

Lyra wanted to reach out to him, to hold him. She knew that was what people did, it was the only script she had, but it would be giving too much. She had to make sure he could keep his promises before she could consider giving him anything more, especially those things that were so easily twisted and misinterpreted and had ruined them once.

‘You have my leave to rejoin my counsels then, on probation.’

He bowed his head, accepted. She was a primarch, too much herself to be loved for anything but what she was.

‘Tell me of home, Luther,’ she said, almost too softly to hear.

‘They tell stories of you, the old ones they always told of you as the Lion, but also of Lyra la’Jonson. Every year, there are girls among the supplicants at the trials, with bad haircuts and their brothers’ clothing. I let them stay, if they’re good enough. I help them hide, though I keep my face cloaked and my voice low about it. I tell the Apothecaries to be discreet. I remember you. They’re good girls, Lyra. I know some of your sisters have as many daughters as they do sons, and there were women among the Terrans, but that was never our way and things have changed only so fast. These are _your_ daughters, in your image. You’ll like them...’


	7. Bruises Easily

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dorn likes Loken well enough, but, well, not the way she likes Sieglinda. (A, fem!Dorn/fem!Sigismund, background fem!Horus/fem!Loken, nsfw, WIP)

She bruises easily, Dorn had said, and those assembled had chuckled at the joke of the famed First Captain of the Imperial Fists troubled by a mere bruise. She was Sieglinda, the Black Knight, as aggressive as a Luna Wolf or a World Eater rather than more stoic Imperial Fist stereotype, the strongest of all the Legias Astartes.

But Rosaria Dorn touched her gently, because she was precious to her. Her hands were a primarch's hands, made to crush the galaxy in her fists, so she never let herself be less than careful with Sieglinda. She pressed Sieglinda against her, feeling her calloused skin, taunt muscle, and soft breasts, and knew how very breakable she was for all the superlatives she had even among Astartes.

Sieglinda rested her head in the groove between her primarch’s breasts, her hands on the curves of her hips, boldness overcome by awe.

‘Don’t worry. I’m sure the Empress, beloved of all, will find some use for you in war, even from the bastion of Terra. Once she sees how utterly useless you are at staying behind walls.’

Sieglinda looked up at her to apologise, but saw her primarch’s soft smile and realised she was being teased. ‘If you’re going to offer, my lady... I would never do less than my duty, but I don’t feel it’s the best use of me.’

‘I saw you arguing with Loken, but what do you think of her really?’

Sieglinda considered. ‘I don’t dislike her by any means. I merely find her naïve.’

Dorn did not share her daughter’s firm belief that war would never end, but she’d never called her to task on it. Some Legions worried about becoming superfluous. The Imperial Fists had many other talents than war, as they would demonstrate on Terra, and as for Sieglinda... well, even if she couldn’t find her a steady stream of policing actions and ork outbreaks, Dorn needed her personally, by her side, like her own right hand. That would never change.

‘Good. I don’t mind you sporting with the Mournival, but genuine conflict would be unseemly.’

Dorn did like Garvielle Loken. She would have been proud to count her among her own daughters, had she been of Inwit rather than Cthonia. She would be good for Ishtar, as Sejana had been. She wondered if Ishtar and Loken were in a position very much like she and Sieglinda right now. She smiled at the thought of how Loken would look with a primarch’s attention on her, awed and blushing as she bared herself for her lady. Sieglinda kissed along her collarbone, and she turned her attention back to who she was with, the one she’d always chose above all others.

Her hand in her hair was enough encouragement for Sieglinda to lick down the curve of her breast and take a nipple in her mouth, lapping and sucking at it. Dorn ran her hands down her back, stroking the generous swell of her ass. She let one hand dip between her thighs, feeling how wet she already was. Sieglinda gasped as Dorn slipped a finger inside her, then a second.


	8. Lyra and Ljufa

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyra/Ljufa pegging PWP, with slight background Lyra/Luther, B1

‘Ljufa. Ljufa,’ Lyra snapped. It felt incorrect to say _stop_ when she was the one pinning Russ to the bed, but it was what came to mind. She had a high opinion of herself, only reasonably, but she suspected very strongly that Russ was running this encounter. Russ was the better wrestler--the better crude brawler--and if she was under her that was because she was content to be. She was almost rather more experienced, from everything Lyra had ever heard and the way she’d been coming on to her in the first place.

‘Yes?’ Russ asked playfully, shifting her hips and running a foot up the inside of Lyra’s leg just so, making her shiver involuntarily.

‘I…’ She would just have to say it. Russ could hardly be unaware, anyway. ‘I have no idea how women have sex with each other.’ Her knowledge of how women had sex with men was limited and entirely theoretical as well. She only overheard stray bits of barracks gossip, never sought it out, and she and Luther never had…

Russ burst out laughing. Lyra threw a punch, offended. Russ swung back at her and they descended into a much more comfortable fight of jabs and shoves. Russ was definitely choosing to sprawl on her back and pull Lyra over her, though. Afraid to scare her off? And damn her for using Lyra’s breasts like handholds like that, even if (especially because) her callouses felt very good against her soft, sensitive skin.

‘You can fuck me with a strap-on if you want.’

Lyra closed her eyes on a long second, reluctant as she was to take her eyes off the Wolf. Her brain was made for the most complex of tactical problems and finding solutions to them, but they’d never been as complicated, as embarrassing to even consider as this. ‘I was not aware that was option.’

‘I know quite a bit of what I like, from taking no shortage of women and men to my bed. I could be wrong, but I suspect you’ll like this, sister.’

Ljufa Russ: warrior, sorceress, beast, queen. Beautiful like a glacier was beautiful, like a hurricane. Utterly confident in her femininity and sexuality in ways Lyra couldn’t imagine being. She decided exactly what rules were what she wanted and dismissed all else as not applicable to her.

How much was Russ humouring her? Let Lyra pretend to be the man in the relationship, she’s delusional like that. Lyra wished she was better with people. Russ had never been malicious; incomprehensible, but not malicious.

‘Show me what to do.’

*

Russ made no secret of liking Lyra pushing into her. Lyra shook her head, trying to process and get used to the feeling of the padded leather strap-on Russ had produced pressing and shifting against her clitoris as she moved. Russ only had so much patience for her before shifting her hips and thighs to urge her deeper, her hands on Lyra’s back, her ass.

It was very good. A primarch did not run away, so she simply had to pretend not to be overwhelmed and let herself enjoy it. She couldn’t feel Russ directly, but she could feel how the dildo moved inside her, the resistance of her body as it stretched to accommodate it, the wet slide of it.

Lyra could feel how wet she was as well, the throbbing of her heartbeat between her legs, the urge for more friction to stimulate her swollen clit. Russ’ hands on her back, squeezing her ass, pulling her hair, didn’t help either. Nor did Russ’ wet kisses, the way she licked down her neck or across her breasts. Russ’ breasts were larger than hers, like pillows when crushed against hers, while Lyra’s were small and pert, the tissue softened from years of binding.

‘Ljufa, I…’

‘That’s good.’ Russ grinned up at her, pleased and predatory. ‘You can come now. I’m just getting started with you.’

Lyra considered if it was too late to run now, but Russ’ hands on her felt so very good that perhaps this once she could let her sister win and have her wicked ways with her. Besides, she was shaking too hard with her orgasm, waves of it spasming inside her, making her clit oversensitive to every movement. And Russ didn’t stop touching her, didn’t stop the friction between them.

Russ pet her blonde hair and kissed her messily. ‘That was... informative,’ Lyra admitted.

Russ laughed. ‘You haven’t the foggiest what you don’t know yet.’ Because of course they had to fight over everything, but Lyra had to admit, if only to herself, that Russ had had plenty of opportunity to prove herself right over the following hours.


End file.
